The whole thing can get very complicated. For one, the teenager who is trying to continue his addictive lifestyle will naturally play one parent against the other. He will be aware of the tensions and resentments being played out. In fact, as both parents desire to win his approval, playing one parent against the other will bring him more and more power.

And secondly, the teenager is probably going to side with the parent who is most enabling of him in his addiction. The one that most wants to rescue him from the consequences of his addiction is naturally going to be the teen-favorite. Sometimes, but not always, the enabling parent has a relationship with substances too. Therefore, he or she minimizes the seriousness life-threatening nature of the teenager's addiction. Often, there is a whole lot of drama and finer-pointing. Through it all, the teenage drug addict wants the focus to be on the parents, not on him

That pretty much says it all, doesn't it? When difficult child is home I walk on eggshells HOPING that he and husband will not "get into it". I'm the favorite because I want to protect him. husband wants to deal with the behavior, I try to deal with the reason. ARGH! I hate it when husband is right!

That is absolutely the way things happened in our home while difficult child was drugging. The more he drugged, the more husband and I argued. difficult child hated me because I was so strict and drew the line in the sand. He'd always give me the, "Dad said ..." which would, of course, start a fight between husband and I. It took a while for husband to realize that if we didn't put up a united front, difficult child would never own up to the problems as being his - not ours.